FLYING SPARKS: Growing Up on the Edge of Las Vegas

After suffering years of abuse, Larson finally realizes that she'd only "wanted to be wanted." Her memoir opens when she's nine, with the school psychiatrist bullying her into finding images in his Rorschach cards. School troubles are fast overshadowed when a family "friend" rapes her. Soon, her life falls into a nightmarish pattern of running away and being abused, each betrayal further confirming her sense of unworthiness. Eventually, she's sent to a mental hospital called Sparks, from which she escapes and ends up alone at age 12 on the streets of Oakland. It takes years for Larson to understand why she's so vulnerable to mistreatment: she has trusted others, hoping for acceptance or, at least, to avoid punishment. Only in the end does she suspect it's her mother's approval she's been craving, the mother who has beaten her for every little slip. Realizing that real injustice has been done to her, and that she's not entirely to blame, she begins taking control of her life. While some details here—kids pricking fingers to become "blood brothers," teenage boys driving Fords and rubbing Brylcream on their D.A.'s while girls "rat" their beehives—might evoke the stereotypically innocent late 1950s, the seamy underside of that period is the book's real setting. If Larson hadn't wandered into the arms of some bongo-playing, nonviolent beatnik men, she might never have survived to write this book. Readers who grew up in the '50s (and Dorothy Allison fans of all ages) will be captivated by this account of a sad and soiled coming-of-age. (July)